Safri Ishak



Version 16-MAY-2021

Rumbai Pekanbaru (I)

Setelah kenaikan kelas kami berangkat ke Pekanbaru naik pesawat terbang .... horeee, first time in my life, pesawat jenis Dakota, jumlah tempat duduk sekitar tiga puluh dan kami bersepuluh, berarti sepertiga kapasitas tempat duduk. Pesawat ini agak unik, karena roda belakang lebih kecil daripada roda depan sehingga pada waktu kita duduk dikursi sebelum take off posisi duduk agak mendongak kedepan, kalau sudah mengudara posisi duduk jadi horizontal. Kami berangkat dari Kemayoran Airport dan di Pekanbaru kami mendarat di Pelabuhan Udara Simpang Tiga, landasan pesawat masih menggunakan tanah yang dikeraskan.

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Di Rumbai kami tinggal di rumah kontrakan di Kampung Bedeng, tidak jauh dari rumah ada Klinik dan Bus Station milik perusahaan. Kalau mau ke pasar di Pekanbaru kami naik Bus Panjang, kepalanya menggunakan kepala trailer dan badan bus yang ditarik mirip gerbong kereta api. Kalau terbayang Bus Panjang saya teringat sebuah gurindam yang berbunyi Bus Panjang batali kawek, Awak bujang baranak ampek.

Antara Rumbai dan Pekanbaru di pisahkan oleh sungai Siak, bus berhenti didekat sungai dan kami menyeberang ke Bom Baru di Pekanbaru dengan menyeberangi jembatan Ponton. Kalau ada kapal yang mau lewat, maka beberapa tongkang yang merupakan bagian dari jembatan dibawa ke pinggir sungai, setelah kapal lewat, tongkang-tongkang tadi dikembalikan menjadi jembatan untuk kendaraan dan orang lewat. Dari Bom Baru kami ke Pasar Pusat Pekanbaru dengan menumpang oplet. Biasanya kembali dari pasar, Ayah suka bertanya mau naik oplet atau beli martabak, pastinya kami pilih beli martabak dan jalan kaki ke Bom Baru.

Di Rumbai saya dan kakak saya Farida sekolah di SMP Indrapura yang biasa disebut juga SMP Goni, konon sekolah tersebut didirikan oleh pegawai perusahaan dengan modal jualan karung (goni) bekas. Waktu kami masuk sekolah, kami merupakan angkatan pertama kelas tiga bersama sepuluh teman-teman sekelas. Karena PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia merupakan perusahaan asing, maka teman teman kami anak pegawai sangat mahir berbahasa Inggris dan kami yang belum pernah jumpa orang asing sangat ketinggalan dan paling tersiksa pada waktu mengikuti mata pelajaran tersebut. Alhamdulillah waktu ujian akhir SMP kami berdua ikut lulus. Kemudian kami melanjutkan sekolah ke SMA 1 Pekanbaru, adik saya Tamrin sekolah ST, juga di Pekanbaru dan adik-adik yang lain sekolah di SR Negri Rumbai.

Saya punya teman, rumahnya dekat SMA 1 Pekanbaru dan dia punya pohon rambutan unik, buahnya kalau masak warnanya kuning, belum pernah saya lihat rambutan seperti itu sebelumnya.

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Dikutip dari Kampung Terempa: Rambutan adalah buah favorit bagi penggemar buah, berbagai jenis dan rasa tersedia di Jakarta, di Terempa juga ada rambutan dari jenis aceh lebak dan aceh kuning, yang terakhir ini sudah termasuk langka karena tidak ada peremajaan bagi tanaman yang rasanya manis seger ini.

Selama di Rumbai untuk makan sehari-hari sudah mencukupi, karena pada waktu itu pegawai dan keluarga mendapat pembagian natura seperti beras, gula, sabun, minyak tanah dan lain-lain, sebagian dari natura dijual untuk membeli lauk pauk dan pakaian, kalau sayur bisa didapat disekitar rumah, daun singkong, buah nangka muda, pucuk paku, daun labu dan lain-lain. Fasilitas rumah sakit Perusahaan sangat lengkap dan adik bungsu kami Rosmala lahir di Rumah Sakit Rumbai.

Di Rumbai, mula-mula Ayah mengontrak rumah di seberang kampung Bedeng, dipisahkan oleh jalan menuju Bom Lama (pelabuhan milik Calex) dan sebatang sungai kecil. Barang-barang perabot rumah tangga dan peralatan Ayah dikirim lewat laut dan ditanggung oleh perusahaan. Sebagian dari barang barang tadi di pak dengan bambu, sehingga kami punya banyak persediaan bambu, buat layangan, aur dan busur panah. Ada kawan saya, Sucipto Soentoro, ayahnya pegawai staff dan tinggal di atas, sebutan untuk lokasi perumahan perusahaan. Kawan saya tadi suka mengajak saya main di lapangan didepan rumah-nya, di punya busur dan anak panah untuk berburu yang katanya dibeli dari Amerika, sangat bagus sekali. Karena ingin punya juga, saya dan adik membuat busur dari bambu, tidak sebagus barang impor tentunya, tapi berfungsi, sasaran kami pohon nangka yang banyak tumbuh dekat rumah. Kalau diingat sekarang, saya merasa ngeri membayangkan betapa berbahayanya mainan tersebut.

Tempat bermain kami yang lain adalah dikebun dan ladang tetangga dibelakang rumah, kadang-kadang kami bermain sampai ke hutan karet dibelakang kebun. Kami tidak merasa takut, sampai suatu kejadian mendekati Hari Raya Qurban, ada harimau masuk kampung dan menerkam anjing dikolong rumah tetangga. Sejak saat itu kami tidak pernah lagi bermain ke hutan karet, apalagi ada kejadian pengumpul getah karet diterkam harimau. Bermainnya hanya didekat rumah, diantaranya memancing di anak sungai Siak dekat rumah, dimusim hujan banyak ikan baung. Dulu ikan baung jarang dimakan dan tidak laku dijual, tetapi sekarang merupakan salah satu ikan yang paling dicari selain ikan patin, gulai santan ikan baung, pakai sambal cabai hijau, lamak banaaaa, sedap, mau? silahkan singgah ke kedai Pak Mansur di Jl. Sekolah, Rumbai.

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Selang beberapa bulan kemudian, Ayah mengajak kami pindah ke Kampung Bedeng, saya tidak tahu kenapa, pokoknya kalau Ayah sama Mak pindah, pastinya ikut pindah. Sebelumnya sudah saya ceritakan, beras, gula, garam, sabun, minyak makan dan minyak tanah dapat jatah dari perusahaan dan jumlahnya lebih dari cukup untuk keperluan sehari-hari. Jadi tinggal cari lauk, Mak suka mengajak saya belanja ke Pasar Bawah Pekanbaru, utamanya beli ikan asin, belacan, bawang dan cabe. Kalau sudah punya persediaan bahan-bahan tadi, aman, ikan asin digoreng, belacan dan cabe buat sambal belacan, sayur utama nangka muda direbus, makan sampai kenyang. Saking seringnya nangka muda diambil, kadang-kadang kami kehabisan stock, sehingga suka minta sama tetangga, untungnya tetangga memaklumi keadaan kami, sembilan anak yang lagi lahap-lahapnya makan. Selain nangka muda rebus, menu yang lain yang kami cari disekitar rumah adalah sayur daun paku (pakis) merah, kalau dimasak, kuah sayur berwarna merah, daun ubi kayu, daun labu, kacang panjang dan lain-lain. Untuk makanan tambahan Mak mengolah ubi kayu jadi godok, ubi goreng, ubi rebus, lapek ubi dan penganan dari bahan ubi kayu lainnya. Ubi kayu kami beli langsung dari kebun tetangga, sekali beli satu karung isi 20 an kilo, dek seringnya beli, ubi kayu satu ladang bisa habis, sehingga kami harus pindah ke ladang yang lain.

Semester pertama SMA, Ayah mengajak pindah lagi ke Jakata, menurut orang tua saya, walaupun makan cukup tapi kalau kita terus tinggal di Rumbai akan susah melanjutkan sekolah nantinya. Tahun 1964 kami kembali ke Jakarta, waktu itu kami naik pesawat Convair. Pesawat Convair lebih besar daripada pesawat jenis Dakota dan posisi duduk sudah horizontal.

Di Jakarta kami tinggal dirumah adik ayah di Tomang Ancak (sekarang di belakang Rumah Sakit Kanker). Sama seperti waktu pertama kali tinggal di Tebet, ayah membeli kavling dekat rumah tempat kami menumpang, terus dibangun sendiri dengan bantuan beberapa tukang, bedanya rumah di Tomang sudah lengkap daun pintu dan daun jendelanya.

Kisah lebih lanjut waktu di Jakarta, silahkan klik disini.

WIKIPEDIA

Trailer bus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A trailer bus or articulated trailer bus is a bus formed out of a bus bodied semi-trailer pulled by a conventional tractor unit in the same way as a conventional articulated semi-trailer truck.

Trailer buses are usually pulled by a conventional truck from various truck manufacturers, while others have larger space cabs. Trailer bus bodies are built by various local builders.

History

An early trailer bus was designed in Amsterdam in the 1920s as bus designs got longer. As a solution to possible grounding hazards on humped bridges, three prototypes were built in 1924, but proved to be problematic, and later converted to rigid bodies in 1927.[1]

During World War II and in the immediate post-war years, trailer buses were turned to as a simple and economical way of providing bus transport to replace worn out conventional bus fleets. The semi-trailers were basic and uncomfortable, but each could carry more passengers than an ordinary single-decker bus, and nearly as many as a double-decker bus. Indeed at least one double-decker trailer bus was known to have been built for service in India.[2]

In Australia, 123 semi-trailer type buses were built between 1939 and 1984; one example, a 1947 semi-trailer coupled with an American-built 1943 White M3A1 tractor, is now located in Sydney Bus Museum in Sydney, New South Wales. The Sydney exhibit was the last trailer bus used in NSW, withdrawn in 1977.[3][4]

Trailer buses were also used in Perth, Western Australia, from 1952 onwards, purchased by Western Australian Government Railways, with the trailer bodies built by Scarbrough Bus Services.[5]

In 1948, ten British-built[6] trailer buses saw service as a staff canteens for London Transport (in country green livery)[7] with one passing to the Cobham Bus Museum in 1972.

A large order for 1175 buses from the Netherlands Railways for buses from Crossley included an order for 250 trailer buses, each to carry 52 seated and 28 standing passengers.[8] The tractor units were delivered as short Crossley DD42s, and these were matched in Holland with DAF built trailer chassis fitted with bus bodies.

In the late 1980s, a Mexican-built trailer bus was in test service in the Los Angeles / Orange County area of California.

Obsolescence

As early as in the 1950s, trailer buses began to quickly fall out of favour, due to a variety of factors:

* The length of trailer buses make them difficult to negotiate sharp turns at narrow street corners;
* Each trailer bus normally requires a two-person crew, with the driver in the tractor and the conductor in the semi-trailer;
* The perceived danger of a passenger-laden semi-trailer dislodging from its tractor while under way has led to many jurisdictions in the United States, Canada and Australia prohibiting passengers being carried in towed trailers.

Trailer buses saw service until at least 1984 in South Africa,[9] possibly due to the rugged terrain in its remote areas, and the availability of specialist bus builders as opposed to truck dealers and basic body builders.

Trailer buses are still in service in Cuba, where they were introduced under the nickname of "camellos" ("camels", from the twin-humped shape of the trailers) during the so-called "Special Period" after the fall of the Soviet Union. As of 2008[update], the trailer buses are reportedly being gradually retired from service in Havana city, replaced by Chinese-made buses.[10]

C-47 Skytrain
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Douglas C-47)

The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota is a military transport aircraft that was developed from the Douglas DC-3 airliner. It was used extensively by the Allies during World War II and remained in front line operations through the 1950s with a few remaining in operation to this day.
Design and development

During World War II, the armed forces of many countries used the C-47 and modified DC-3s for the transport of troops, cargo and wounded. Over 10,000 aircraft were produced in Long Beach and Santa Monica, California and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The Oklahoma City plant produced 5,354 C-47s from March 1943 until August 1945.

Operational history

The C-47 was vital to the success of many Allied campaigns, in particular those at Guadalcanal and in the jungles of New Guinea and Burma where the C-47 (and its naval version, the R4D) made it possible for Allied troops to counter the mobility of the light-traveling Japanese army. Additionally, C-47s were used to airlift supplies to the embattled American forces during the Battle of Bastogne. But possibly its most influential role in military aviation was flying "The Hump" from India into China. The expertise gained flying "The Hump" would later be used in the Berlin Airlift, in which the C-47 would play a major role, until being replaced by the C-54.

In Europe, the C-47 and a specialized paratroop variant, the C-53 Skytrooper, were used in vast numbers in the later stages of the war, particularly to tow gliders and drop paratroops. In the Pacific, with careful use of the island landing strips of the Pacific Ocean, C-47s were even used for ferrying soldiers serving in the Pacific theater back to the United States.

C-47s in British and Commonwealth service took the name Dakota, from the acronym "DACoTA" for Douglas Aircraft Company Transport Aircraft.[1] The C-47 also earned the informal nickname Gooney Bird during the European theater of operations.[2]

The USAF Strategic Air Command had C-47 Skytrains in service from 1946 through 1967.
C-47s unloading at Tempelhof Airport during Berlin Airlift.

After World War II Douglas structurally modified a number of the early Navy R4D aircraft and the US Navy re-designated the modified aircraft as R4D-8, later C-117D, sometimes referred to as the Super Dakota.

The Pakistan Air Force used C-47 Dakota cargo planes which it used to transport supplies to the Pakistan Army soldiers fighting in the Indo-Pakistan War of 1947 against India.

Several C-47 variations were used in the Vietnam War by the United States Air Force, including three advanced electronic warfare variations which were sometimes called "Electric Gooneys" designated EC-47N,EC-47P,or EC-47Qs depending on the engine used.[3] EC-47's were also operated by the Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian Air Forces.[4]. A gunship variation, utilizing three 7.62mm miniguns, designated AC-47 "Spooky" often nicknamed "Puff the Magic Dragon" was also deployed.[2]

The Royal Canadian Air Force and later, the Canadian Air Force employed the C-47 for transportation, navigation and radar training, and search & rescue operations from the 1940s to the 1980s.[5]

After World War II thousands of surplus C-47s were converted to civil airline use, some remaining in operation in 2009

Convair
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Convair was an American aircraft manufacturing company which later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. Convair existed as a company for the design, development, and manufacturing of high-technology aerospace products, and/or sub-units of them, or else was a subsidiary of a larger corporation. Convair existed as a company from 1943 until 1994.
The Origins of Consolidated Vultee Aircraft and Convair

The Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, whose name was in the course of time changed to Convair the Convair Corporation and similar names, was an American aircraft, rocket, and spacecraft company for the design, development, and manufacturing of such high-technology aerospace products, and/or sub-units of them, or else a subsidiary of a larger corporation. It existed as a company from 1943 until 1994, and of course, its best-known predecessor the Consolidated Aircraft company had existed before that, and had produced aircraft that were important in the early years of World War II, especially the PBY Catalina for the U.S. Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the British flying forces, and some others. The Catalina remained in production though May 1945, and a total of over 4.000 of them were built. What was soon to be called "Convair" (first unofficially, and then officially), was created in 1943 by the merger of the Consolidated Aircraft Company and the Vultee Aircraft Company. This merger produced a large airplane company of that time period, though still smaller than the giants like Douglas Aircraft, Boeing, and Lockheed. Convair always had most of its research, design, and manufacturing operations in San Diego County of Southern California, and nearby counties, though other locations were involved, as well.

Convair in the Jet Age, the Cold War, and the Space Age

In March 1953, all of the Convair company was bought by the General Dynamics Corporation, a conglomerate of military and high-technology companies, and it became officially the Convair Division within General Dynamics.[1]

After the beginning of the jet age of military fighters and bombers, Convair was a pioneer of the delta-winged aircraft design, along with the French Dassault aircraft company, which designed and built the Mirage figher planes.

Some of Convair's most famous products were the gigantic 10 Engined Convair B-36 strategic bomber, burning 4 turbojets & turning 6 backward props driven by huge Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial piston engines. Convair B-36is the largest landbased piston engined bomber in the world. the Atlas missile, the F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart delta-winged interceptors, and the delta-winged B-58 Hustler supersonic intercontinental nuclear bomber. For a period of time in the 1960s, Convair manufactured its own line of jet commercial airliners, but this did not turn out to be a profitable business. However, Convair found that it was profitable to become an aviation subcontractor and to manufacture large subsections of airliners, such as fuselages for the larger airliner companies, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, and Lockheed.

The Convair Division produced its own airplane designs, such as several airliners, until 1965, when it shifted from these to airframe/aerostructure subcontracting projects for other companies. Convair also shifted more money and effort into its outer space products, especially rocket boosters. The Convair-made and cryogenically-fueled Atlas missile ICBM for the U.S. Air Force had within just a handful of years become obsolete, and had been replaced by the room-temperature liquid-fueled Titan II missile and the solid-fueled Minuteman missile.

Convair worked hard to make its Atlas rocket product into an very reliable space booster rocket, especially when combined with the Centaur upper stage to form the Atlas-Centaur rocket for launching geosynchronous communication satellites and space probes. The Centaur rocket was also designed, developed, and produced by Convair, and it was the first widely-used outer space rocket to use the all-cryogenic fuel-oxidizer combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The use of this liquid hydrogen - liquid oxygen combination in the Centaur was an important direct precursor to the use of the same fuel-oxidizer combination in the Saturn S-II second stage and the Saturn S-IVB third stage of the gigantic Saturn V moon rocket of the Apollo project. The S-IVB had earlier also been used as the second stage of the smaller Saturn IB rocket, such as the one which was used to launch Apollo 7. The Centaur upper stage was first designed and developed for launching the Surveyor lunar landers, beginning in 1966, to augment the delta-V of the Atlas rockets and give them enough payload capability to deliver the required mass of the Surveyors to the Moon.

Well-over 100 Convair-produced Atlas-Centaur rockets (including those with their successor designations) were used to successfully launch over 100 satellites, and among their many other outer space missions, they launched the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes, the first two to be launched on trajectories that carried them out of the Solar System.

In addition to aircraft, missiles and space vehicles, Convair developed the large Charactron vacuum tubes, which were the precursors of modern cathode ray tube (CRT) computer displays,[2] and to give an example of a minor product, the CORDIC algorithms, which is widely used today to calculate trigonometric functions in calculators, field-programmable gate arrays, and other small electronic systems.

The End of the Road for Convair and All Its Predecessors

In 1994, the General Dynamics Corporation dismembered and sold the original Convair Division, along with other General Dynamics aerospace units that had been swept into it over the decades. The airframe/aerostructures manufacturing company and the space boosters company (both mostly in California) were sold to the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. Then, there were Fort Worth, Texas, factory, and its associated engineering locations, laboratories, etc. These had been used to manufacture hundreds of F-111 Aardvark fighter-bombers and thousands of F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter planes, which were not Convair products (but rather "General Dynamics" products), for the U.S. Air Force, and dozens of smaller projects. Everything there, including all intellectual property and the legal rights to the products that were being designed and built there, were sold to the Lockheed Corporation. In 1996, General Dynamics deactivated all of the remaining legal entities of the Convair Division.